


Silk and Stone

by Talarohk



Category: Eclipse Phase
Genre: Cyberpunk, Gen, Lovecraftian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9254072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talarohk/pseuds/Talarohk
Summary: A short story of the events in the last days of a young woman's life. Set in the Eclipse Phase universe. Elements of Lovecraftian horror (as would be expected in the setting).





	

**<** **06/13/25 || 19:22:54** **>** Okay, this feels really weird. I’m not even sure why I’m doing this, except Nemmy said it might be good for me. She said something about how keeping a journal allows for a “kind of introspection which immersion in a neverending flow of updates and flashes makes scarce”. It can be really irritating when your muse is smarter than you...but I guess that’s kind of the point, huh? Anyway, she thought I should actually be _typing_ this journal—like with fingers on haptics, rather than neurotext—but I convinced her that dictation would be enough. I guess I’m lucky she didn’t ask for cursive (I found that word the other day when I was looking through some really old image archives—decided to look at images of Mozart’s original compositions on a whim—and had to ask what the weird squiggles were).

So I guess I’m going to be keeping this journal. Heck, she’s usually been right before. And I could use a creative kick, been kinda stuck down a musical well. I don’t think I’ve composed anything worth hearing since _Fluxtube Variations_ . I had started on that new one, _Voidwards_ , but I’m jammed on where to go with it. Maybe this’ll be just what I need.

 

 **<** **06/14/25 || 08:40:07** **>** Had breakfast with Mayji at the SteelCut this morning. Their main fabber was having a software update, and that model has to get them direct from the manufacturer on Luna, and there’s some kind of solar storm futzing the bandwidth, so it was going to take forever. Anyway, they had their backup online, and I think the ghost running that one is a better cook anyway. The eggs were really good. She always gets the spicy just right. Plus, she said she liked _Shiverlight_ , which was nice to hear. I’ve never understood why that piece seems to catch the AIs, but they do seem to groove it.

Mayji said that Jason had gotten a new nanotat, and he was dying to show it off to everyone. She said it was pretty slick, but there was some kind of glitch in the animation so when the dragon went over his shoulders it made his whole back look like a giant butt for a sec. She said not to tell him. I guess he’ll find out when the posts start showing up on his feed. Dawk, I hate it when I find things out that way.

 

 **<** **06/14/25 || 12:00:16** **>** The usual traffic on the axis thruway. I barely got to class on time. It would be so much easier if we could just link in from anywhere, but the college has some pretty oldstyle takes on intellectual property, and they want everything to be inside their physical network. So we all have to actually GO there, actually physically jack in the classroom, rather than get it over the mesh like anyone else, because some geezer profs are paranoid, don’t trust crypto, and think that meatspace matters.

Oldsters. Sheesh.

Nemmy tells me I should learn to flow with it, and I guess she’s right. Plus, when Prof Halliwell gets into her zone, she does have some things to say, I admit. Today, she was walking us through a VR tour of eighteenth-century sculpture from Italia, and she showed us this one of a man lying down with something over his face. Everyone else went on, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I had to keep looking at it, for some reason. Nemmy said it was called the “Veiled Christ”, by Giuseppi Sammartino. I had never heard of him—sculpture isn’t my main thrust—but I couldn’t look away. The prof came over and saw what was happening, and she started telling me about how it had happened to her too, when she first saw it. She said there was something about the draping on the face that struck her as holy and deeply creepy at the same time, which is just how I felt. Somehow, this Sammartino made stone transparent, and it was _amazing_ but also weirded me out majorly. I kept thinking about what it would feel like to have your face trapped forever in something hard like stone but clingy like silk, and it gave me some serious shivers.

I know a little about Christ, but there aren’t a lot of Christians on my hab. Those of us who have religion usually follow the Evolutionists, like my parents. But evolution means you have to be free to move, change, and grow; if you’re dead behind a sheet of stone, you’re static. The Christians think he rose again, which they say is a miracle. I guess it would have been then. If Christ lived today, we wouldn’t be surprised if he rose after three days; we’d wonder what took so long, and whether his new sleeve had any good mods. But he looked awfully still under that marble veil.

Brrr. Halliwell does have that creepy insight, like I said. Maybe too much. I’ll ping Yoda and Rhys and have them meet me for lunch, they ought to be enough to snap me out of this.

 

 **<** **06/14/25 || 13:15:00** **>** Okay, definitely in a new egospace. Yoda and Rhys were great, they always are. Yoda was in a new sleeve _again_ this month, some kind of sylph, I think. His family can afford it (good for them), and rental on sleeves isn’t THAT much, so I guess it’s not that weird, but still. I _hate_ resleeving. I only had to do it once, when we egocast to Titan that one time for Dad’s talk. I just couldn’t get over the fact that it wasn’t _my_ body. Everything felt just a little wrong. I know they update the proprioceptive map when they sleeve you in, but it still felt like my arms and legs weren’t quite right. I kept having to fight the urge to look behind me, like I had tentacles growing out of my back or something. (Didn’t help that I saw a guy who _did_ have tentacles growing out of his back right after I came out of the ‘cast port.)

Yoda seems happy, though. He always does with a new morph. And I have to admit, this one looks damned good. He and Rhys had just finished working out, so they were hungry, and when he sat down he brushed by me, and I could smell his sweat. I know that most sylphs have edited metabolism—they’re not supposed to smell bad, ever—but wow, smelling his body made me dizzy for just a second. Here, I will freely admit that I did indulge some thoughts of sharing a workout with Yoda, and not at the gym. But only for a second. Maybe this sylph he’s in has some kind of pheromone control or something.

Damn him. I’m still thinking about it. I’ll bet he did it on purpose, which is mean, given that he and Rhys are exclusive. Heck, we could bring Rhys in too. I wouldn’t mind…

 

 **<** **06/14/25 || 13:17:20** **>** Okay, Nemmy, I know that unrealistic fantasies can be a distraction from my work, and it’s class time, I know. Yes, Nemmy. On the other hand, I just had some new ideas for a piece I think I’ll call _Symphony of the Three-Body Problem_.

And what’s a problem, but a possible opportunity?

 

 **<** **06/14/25 || 13:17:55** **>** OKAY, Nemmy!

 

 **< 06/15/25 || 17:34:15>** Just got back from the WEIRDEST art exhib. It was over at 35°/6.2, the Allison Museum. I heard about it from Thekes; he said he had gone, and it was—and I quote--”gnarly”. I had to run that one by Nemmy. I swear, people who do the TwenCen obsession thing are completely crazy.

Anyway, the exhibit was called “Dick Pics: An exploration of biological and synthetic genitalia and their relevance in social media from 35 BF to the present day.” I looked and looked, but couldn’t find any connection to Saint Richard. Finally, once Nemmy figured out what I was doing, she said that Blessed Dawkins wasn’t involved, and that “dick” used to be a slang term for penis. She said that a “dick pic” started out as a term for an unsolicited image of someone’s male-form human-norm genitalia, sent over the mesh, and that it was supposed to be some kind of invitation. I said I was REALLY glad we were over that kind of crap, and she did that kind of throat-clearing sound that she does when she’s embarrassed—or thinks I should be. Turns out that she’s been blocking “dick pics” from my feed since I went online. I asked her how many, and she said there had been 6,520 just today.

 

I told her to keep on blocking them, but to let me know about any that might have “artistic merit”. She sniffled and mumbled something about being “all grown up.” Muses, sheesh.

 

 

 **<** **06/16/25 || 10:25:00** **>** OMG, I just got the BEST news. Lor Lissajous is going to be coming HERE, to Frontier, four months from now! I’ve been hearing bootlegs of their work my whole life, and NOBODY has ever moved me like they have—and now I might get to ACTUALLY hear them play. They’ll be in fem-phase when they get here, and that’s when they make the music I like best, so it’s perfect! And I’m SO close on _Voidwards_ , if I work really hard I know I can have it ready. Maybe even have it out on the mesh. OMG, what if they actually heard it, and liked it? I can barely get this down, I’m so excited. This could be my chance!

 

 **<** **06/16/25 || 12:45:09** **>** This day just keeps getting better! I was just getting myself synced, and ready to get down to work, when Nemmy pinged me. She never does that when she can see I’m in the zone, so I knew it must be important. She didn’t even say anything—just brought up my rep sheet. I didn’t see it at first, and then, there it was—a new line.

I had an Humanities reputation score!

I just about hit the roof. When she knew I had seen it, she drilled it down and showed me. _Percival in Luna_ , that little oratorio I posted six months ago, had actually been done. Apparently, a group on Nexus called “Clown Burrito” downloaded it and actually did a staging, and—here’s the amazing part— _credited me_. Yeah, I know they’re supposed to, but it’s a nothing work—they’d have gotten away with it—but they did the right thing, bless them.

Anyway, they staged it in VR but with actual instruments, and it _took!_ People sat in, and then captured recordings and started sharing them. And because my name was on it, I got registered on the Humanities reputation list, and I HAVE A FREAKING H-REP SCORE! Nemmy says it’s very unusual for anyone to actually show up on H-list before 30 standard. Now...how to make sure Lor Lissajous pings me…

Oh, and for posterity, here’s my line!

 

<<Grassley, Shay><composer><classical><newsynth><Frontier><Hrep 4.25><tags=|new|promising|published|artist|humform|><ID=A540.62248-D//DA>>

 

 **< 06/18/25 || 09:55:00>** Nemmy reminded me that I hadn’t made an entry in this thing for a while, so here it is. It’ll have to be a short one, though. And you’ll never guess why.

MarsNews is doing a piece on me!

Saint Harris must be smiling down on me. Apparently, this journo saw my line, downloaded _Percival_ , and decided she wanted to interview me! She even said to bring any new work I have. _Voidwards_ just isn’t ready, though, and that one matters. I think that’s the one which is going to make me. What else do I have?

I’ll bring a snip of _Trojan Liberation_. Nobody has heard that, and I kind of like it.

This is it! I’m on my way!

 

 **< 06/18/25 || 16:32:05>** Dawkins, what a day. So I did the spot. The journo’s name was Hylaea, and they were really cool. Asked me some questions about what it was like growing up on Frontier, if I ever went anywhere else, whether this was my original morph, that kind of thing. Then they asked about _Percival_ , and I told them about how I started writing it when I had those dreams about going back to Earth, and seeing it rising over the Luna mountains. I was kind of nervous about that, but they were so chill; they said they’d even had the same kind of dreams, that they thought we all did sometimes. We all have these homes, all through the system, but something in all of us knows that Earth is where we came from, and we want it back.

Anyway, she said that hearing _Percival in Luna_ brought that home to her in a way nothing else had! She was SO nice, made me feel like a real star. And she let me play a bit from _Trojan_ on the spot. When we were done, she said that she expected to be hearing more of me, and that they were probably saving me a spot in _Music of the Spheres_ (yeah, right, I can dream!). I was SO buzzed, I pinged Yoda and Rhys and Mayji, and even Thekes! We’re going to see if we can get dinner at Gatecrasher. Always wanted to try it.

 

 **< 06/18/25 || 21:55:20>** I’m SO tired, but I can’t sleep. Maybe if I talk to this thing…

We all checked our rep scores (H-rep is already up 0.2!) and figured they would stand us a nice dinner, so we took the axis up to 1.0, to Gatecrashers. It’s kinda creepy but SO cool, the entrance is done up like one of the Pandora gates (at least how they look in the vids...never seen one myself, obviously.) You go in through this round opening which is TOTALLY dark, and they’ve got some override so that you can’t read the inside of the restaurant at all. When you step through, your location services goes all wonky for a second, and then you come out on the other side and they’ve got it set so you don’t read as even being on the station anymore!

There’s a disclaimer feed in AR that you can hit telling you that you’re _actually_ still on the station, and you can reenable location if you _really_ want (like I guess if you’ve got some phobia about being lost or something), but the feed is easy to ignore and you can blank it if you want. Once you do, it’s like you’ve really gone through a Gate. It’s pretty flash.

We got a table and ordered drinks, and (of course) Rhys starts in on one of his IDEAS.

“How do you know that wasn’t a gate?”

Yoda just rolled his eyes, but Thekes took the bait.

“Whoa, dude. Didn’t you see the AR feed? It _says_ we’re not, brah.”

“Yeah, but why couldn’t _that_ be fake? You could set up a spime to feed that anywhere. Just ‘cause you _say_ it’s fake doesn’t mean it is.”

“That’d be totally illegal, man! You can’t put up misleading loco data, they’ll pop you for that!”

“On Frontier, sure. Wouldn’t be on Extropia.”

Mayji jumped in. “Nothing’s illegal on Extropia.”

Rhys: “Yeah. So if you had a real Gate, and it opened to Extropia, you could put a spime there telling people they were still on Frontier, right?”

Thekes: “Uh...yeah, sure, I guess. But the Gates don’t go to Extropia!”

Rhys, pouncing: “No, they don’t. But they do go to exo worlds. And what’s illegal there?”

Thekes didn’t say anything, but he frowned harder.

Yoda: “Very clever, Rhys. You’ve stumped the surfer. That must be a Menton shell!”

Rhys smacked Yoda on the shoulder. “No way, brah!” he said in an exaggerated TwenCen coastal accent (so Nemmy told me).

Mayji: “So you think we’ve jumped to an exoplanet? That that was a real gate?”

Rhys: “No, not really. I’m just saying we don’t know.”

I glanced over at Thekes. He was focused on the middle distance (where people usually look when they’re reading AR info), mouthing what looked like the words on the disclaimer feed. He blinked, then looked around, his frown mostly fading. I’m guessing he hit the panic button.

Mayji: “I guess we don’t. So how sure are you that we’re going home tonight, when we step back through that doorway?”

Rhys: “How sure are you that Frontier even exists? That it isn’t all a sim?”

Yoda: “I’m pretty sure it is. How else would Shay have a new H-rep line?”

I blushed. Everyone cheered. We drank and ate, and they made me play a bit from _Percival_. The folks at the next table clapped, too.

 

On the way out, we went back through the “Gate”, and then split up to go home. Nemmy’s voice in my mind: “I hope you’re not worried, Shay. The “gate” at the restaurant has none of the emissions of any of the real Pandora gates, and I believe I would be able to detect if we were, in fact, not on Frontier. Everything is as it seems.”

So I’ve now been assured that reality is what I perceive it to be...by my lifelong AI companion who lives in my mesh implants and whispers as a voice in my mind or appears as a ghost in my vision. I feel so much better.

 

Mayji lives pretty close, so we walked together. We went by a shuttle service booth, and she shuddered just a bit. I noticed.

“Static?”

“No, just...something I heard on the feed today. There was a shuttle accident today, near Mars.”

“Shit. What happened?”

“They say the shuttle just suddenly went out of control. Went under full thrust, almost hit a hab.”

“Dawk, no. That’s horrible. Did they get it under control again?”

“No...I...I don’t really want to talk about it. I’ll ping you the feedlink. G’night, Shay.”

We kissed, and she turned and disappeared down her corridor. I kept walking, and in a minute I got the ping. I hit it, and stood for a second while the newsfeed video played.

 

_The shuttle is a newer model, gleaming curves, bulbous fuel storage at the stern. I imagine it full of people on business trips, or returning from a Martian vacation. The vid must have been taken by a surveillance satellite near a hab, one with really good resolution. You can clearly see when one of the left rear thrusters sputters into life, setting up an unbalanced thrust. The shuttle begins to spin._

_I imagine the pilots panicking, the controls unresponsive. I imagine the passengers screaming as the unexpected lateral acceleration spins them to the side, out of their seats. Nobody actually listens to the “harnesses on in freefall” routine._

 

 _I watch the shuttle careen toward the camer_ _a, thrusters firing as the pilots fight to stop the deadly, out-of-control craft. I imagine the emergency guns on the hab swiveling in, ready to blast the shuttle, the decision between the lives of a few dozen passengers and explosive decompression of a hab with thousands not taking a nanosecond for some station gunner infomorph. I imagine the pilots knowing that, and seeing the deadline coming closer in their VR overlay._

 

_The errant thruster suddenly cuts out, long enough for the pilots to slew the ship around just before they get vaporized. The shuttle comes to a stop. I imagine the passengers screaming, but starting to calm down as the pilot’s voice comes to them over their audio mesh, telling them that the malfunction has been resolved. I see the shuttle carefully turn, looking for the nearest emergency dock. The rock of the asteroid the hab is built into frames the view beautifully, like a picture._

 

_The thrusters come on, gently, nudging the shuttle through the turn._

 

_And then the main engines come to life, rocketing the shuttle forward at full orbit-breaking acceleration. I imagine the passengers unable to scream as they are slammed back against seats and bulkheads, unable even to breathe under the crushing 5 or 6 gees._

 

_The shuttle flashes across the field of view, disappearing off the right side of the screen, moving away from the camera but towards the rock of the hab. It’s gone for a second or so, then the camera shakes violently and there’s a flash. Debris shoots into frame, and now the sentry guns come to life, vaporizing chunks of metal and plastic before they can impact vulnerable points. A few of the chunks don’t look as much like metal, plastics, or carbon fiber, but I don’t have long enough to really see what they are before they’re gone._

 

I found myself leaning on the bench, breathing hard, with tears running down my face. A voice in my head:

“Shay? You are showing distress. Was it the video feed you just watched?”

I gulp, stop myself from heaving. “Yes, Nemmy. A shuttle accident, near Mars.”

A pause. “Mayji sent that to you.” Not a question.

“Yeah. She said it bothered her.”

“How nice of her to share it with you, then.”

I brought my breathing under control. Hopefully, the folks on that shuttle had backups, or cortical stacks. The pilots certainly did, it was part of the job. At least their families would see them again.

 

 **< 06/20/25 || 04:20:20>** Okay, now my life has taken a bit of an unexpected turn. About an hour ago, I woke up out of a nightmare. I was one of the passengers in the shuttle. I survived the impact, and saw the hull breach and everyone else get sucked out into space. I couldn’t hear it, but I could see the flashes and bursts as the sentry guns did their job protecting the hab. There was no air, and I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t die. I couldn’t stand watching everything happening outside, but somehow, I knew it was better than turning around and looking toward the cargo hold, because there was SOMETHING THERE, and I somehow knew I really didn’t want to see it. So I had to watch, even knowing that SOMETHING was coming out of the hold, and I couldn’t look, and I couldn’t run.

I’m sure you can guess how I woke up. Nemmy turned on the lights, but she’s been with me long enough to know that I can’t talk right after a nightmare. She waited, while I calmed down, and then spent some time thinking.

“Nemmy?”

“Yes, Shay. I’m here. That must have been a bad one.”

“I never asked. Do you share my dreams?”

“No. I can feel your anxiety, and I can read your subvocalizations, but your vision and mental language are not accessible to me while you dream. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not right now. You’re right, though. It was bad.”

“Was it about the video Mayji sent you? Do you want me to erase it from local storage?”

“No. Actually, I was hoping you could find some more information on it.”

A pause. “Are you sure? Your biosigns still show significant distress.”

“Yes. I don’t think I’ll feel better until I know. I need you to find me video feeds from some of the surveillance cameras which actually show the impact. Can you tell which hab and camera that came from?”

“Of course. One moment.” That bizarre sense of separation you get when your muse’s attention is elsewhere on the mesh, and then the comfort of her return. I’m glad she was quick. I really didn’t want to be alone. “I’m sorry, Shay. There are no other vid feeds available.”

“There must be other cameras. The feeds have been erased?”

“They are not _available._ ”

I paused.

“So they’re there, but not viewable by us.”

“Yes.”

I thought, weighing a new idea.

“Nemmy...what kinds of things do you know how to do?”

“Mostly, I know how to be your friend and guide, Shay. But muses can learn, and I have considered what kinds of skills might be most useful to you. I have been studying synthflute, for example.”

“Really? I didn’t know that. Why?”

“It occurred to me that synthflute would make a beautiful countermelody in the second movement of _Voidwards_.”

“Hmm. You may be right, actually. What else?”

A pause.

“Part of my job is cybernetic protection, Shay. Small tasks like blocking “dick pics” are a trivial aspect of it, but there are others. Between infomorphs, hackers, and other elements, the mesh has a certain level of background intrusion attempts which are variable but consistently present. Like a tide.”

“You’re protecting me from hackers?”

“Always, Shay. It’s part of what I do. All muses do.”

“Thank you. I didn’t know.”

“You’re welcome.” A pause. “I have some inhibitions about discussing this topic any further. You need to unambiguously state that you are seeking more information, addressing me by my proper name.”

Now it was my turn to pause. Nemmy had never, to my knowledge, hidden anything from me unless it was for my own good.

“Is this something dangerous, Nemmy?”

“Not exactly. But it is potentially of questionable legality. I am constrained by strong inhibitions against breaking local laws, but my overriding motivation is your safety and health, Shay. In this case...my judgment is that certain tools may be made available to you.”

I felt a bit like my mother was trying to decide if I was ready to hear about sex before my first date.

“Nemmy...Mnemosyne...please tell me how you can help me see those video feeds.”

“Very well.”

Displays began to appear in my mind’s eye, and Nemmy’s voice—somehow different now—began to explain some of the principles of information security and intrusion.

And that’s how I found out that there was a hacker living inside my head.

 

 **< 06/21/25 || 01:40:34>** I’m just about to go to sleep, but Mnemosyne wanted to make sure I had the basics of what she was going to do before I slept. She said she was going to do it after I went to bed.

Plus, I’m afraid to sleep now. I’m not sure I can take another night like the last.

I don’t know. I’m about to have my muse hack into the security systems of another hab and download restricted cam footage. I doubt Mom would approve, and I’m pretty sure Dad would lock me down for the rest of my life, but I _have_ to know what happened. Maybe if I know Nemmy’s on the case, I’ll get some rest.

 

 **< 06/21/25 || 02:25:10>** Guess not, based on the fact that hab security just checked on this room to make sure nobody was being murdered. Turns out screaming draws attention.

 

 **< 06/21/25 || 07:02:57>** Nemmy’s back, and she got what I asked for. She doesn’t think that the hab’s security AI noticed her, so I guess we’re clean. Anyway, I’m going to watch the videos now. See what I need to see.

 

_This camera faces along the irregular rock of a spur extending out from the main habitat volume. It’s surveillance only; this one isn’t armed, so it can’t take part in the coming carnage. It will only bear witness._

 

_On the left of the field of view, we see the shuttle approaching the hab. It’s almost unbearable to see it in one piece, moving under smooth control; it’s like seeing a picture of your husband on your wedding day after his fatal car accident. It’s a reminder that normality is a veneer._

 

_The shuttle moves forward, out of frame, and we sit knowing what’s about to happen. Not being able to see it makes it worse._

 

_Flickers of light on the rock tell us that the thrusters have started their erratic sputtering. The shadows they throw writhe over the wall as the shuttle spins. Once or twice, we get a glimpse of the edge of the doomed shuttle flying by. The writhing suddenly slows, steadies; the thruster firing has stopped, and the pilots have brought the shuttle back under control._

 

_Knowing that hope and relief have just started to bloom in the minds of the passengers makes this unbearable. We would do anything to stop what we know is inevitable, but we are mute, without voice or hands, just an eye. And there it is; the sudden, bright light as the main engines fire, the frenzied leap of the shuttle into and across the frame, and the shaking of the camera as it impacts on the asteroid._

 

_There is no briliant, lasting fireball; the shuttle crumples and bursts. Fragments of materials spray out from the impact; rock, titanium alloys, glittering fragments of DNA-gel nanocircuitry, chunks of asteroid, and—a moment later—bodies. Morphs mangled out of recognition, fragments of arms, legs, and other limbs. She sees half a novacrab fly by, legs twitching. A few of them might have had vacuum sealing mods, thinking they would see an unexpected decompression as a fun adventure; nobody could have considered a catastrophic control failure and hard impact._

 

_Flickering light, and some of the fragments begin to vaporize in puffs of light. Focused lasers and explosive shells from the sentry guns turning fragments which might damage the hab into harmless plasma. The ones on outward trajectories are spared for now. Some might be recoverable, depending on their final orbits; hopefully, any cortical stacks are among these. Transhuman immortality isn’t unconditional, they have to find the stack to bring you back. There are always people ready for a quick recovery job, so even the ones in bad orbits will probably come back; how they’ll pay off the debt to the ones who fished them out of the black isn’t up to us._

 

_Our attention returns to the shuttle wreckage. If anyone survived (unlikely), that’s where they’ll be. We watch as the wreck tumbles slowly away from the shallow, jagged crater in the asteroid wall. And that’s when we see her. A woman, her morph seemingly mostly intact, clinging to the remnant of a passenger seat. She’s holding something in her hands, some kind of small cylinder. The top is open._

 

_There’s something coming out of it. It’s drifting in thin tendrils back and forth between the cylinder and the woman. As the wreck rotates, we can see that the tendrils are clustered around the interface jacks on the back of her neck. And they don’t stop there; they stretch from there to the cargo bay, a few other bodies, and the remains of the cockpit, and a few of them seem to be growing._

_Towards the asteroid._

 

_As the wreck keeps tumbling—closer to the camera, now—the woman’s face comes into view. She is smiling._

 

_The wreck comes too close to the hab, and the woman, the wreck, and the canister flash into plasma as the video cuts out._

 

“Shay. Shay! I’ve called Frontier health and security; they’ll be here in a minute. I’m so sorry, Shay! I didn’t know. Please, Shay, try and breathe.”

 

 

\------------------------------

 

 **< 06/25/25 || 09:00:04>**: They tell me I should say something here, and maybe I’ll want to read it later. They said I should say who I am. I’m Shay. I think I live in Frontier, but I’m not sure what that it. They say something happened to me. They called it an “adverse fugal state due to traumatic external ego identification”. They tell me someone called Mnemosyne made sure I got help, and that she cares for me, but that I can’t talk to her right now. I hope I get to meet her soon. I sometimes think scary things, and talking to someone who can take care of me would make me feel better.

 

 **< 06/25/25 || 13:20:00>**: I’m remembering more. Sometimes, I wake up in a room with walls that glow soft blue, and talk to people. I tell them what I know, and they touch controls on a glowing screen, and then I feel different about things. Usually, I feel better, but sometimes I feel sad or scared. Other times, I wake up in a bed in a room that doesn’t glow, and there are people who feed me. Mostly, it’s the glowing room, though. They say that’s a room in my head, and they can meet me there and help me remember things so they don’t hurt me. They seem nice.

 

 **< 06/25/25 || 15:45:20>**: I’m Shay. I know that now, and I remember pretty much everything, I think. I guess I can’t know for sure, but sometime you have to trust somebody, right? Nemmy was allowed to talk to me, and she explained the kinds of psychosurgery thay did. I guess I spent a lot of time in VR therapy while they twiddled my mental knobs, and now I’m polished and cleaned out, all ready. Nemmy tells me that I’m okay now, but that it might be another day or two before I’m quite put back together.

I hope I’m me. I don’t know how to be someone else.

 

\---------------------------

 

 **< 06/26/25 || 15:32:04>**: Well, they said I could go back to my normal life, so I went to class today. Everything was fine. Halliwell seemed happy to see me, and Nemmy says she sent pings every day after the first day I missed. She said the class would take it easy today; I’m pretty sure she was trying to make sure I wasn’t going to go Kuiper on them and start clawing people’s faces off.

I don’t think I will, but there was one weird thing. One time, the narf sitting behind me got up and the sleeve on his coat brushed the jacks on my neck, and I kind of freaked. I jumped up and got my back to the wall before I even knew what I was doing. Nemmy talked me down pretty fast, and I guess I’m going back to the clinic tomorrow for a final tune-up. I don’t even know why that happened. I mean yeah, I guess what I saw in the video might still be giving me the jeebles, but I didn’t think I was that scorched over it. I guess you don’t always know what’s going on in your head...which is, when you think about it, kinda scary. Between Nemmy and the me who’s afraid of coats on my jacks, it’s getting kinda crowded in here, and I don’t know how to deal with it. I wonder if you can fork off scorched personalities, give them their own sleeves, and just set ‘em loose. Let them go off and figure out how to live without dragging me down.

I wonder if they’d do the same to me.

I guess I could ask at the clinic. But who would be asking?

Fuck.

 

 **< 06/27/25 || 09:50:10>** Woke up this morning feeling a lot better. Cleaned out, more stable. Kind of like you aired out a room. I think it helps to have a plan.

I’m going to try and meet the folks from the accident.

I figure most of them, maybe all of them, must have been recovered. By now, they’re probably getting ready for sleeving. Some might even be infomorphs, and talking to them is easy as a VR sim. Maybe if I can talk to them, I’ll be able to tie this off and get on with my life. I haven’t done any work on _Voidwards_ in days, and I don’t want to let it go stale. I’ve got to have it in shape when Lissajous comes here. I can’t miss that chance.

At least my H-rep score isn’t dropping yet. Darwin bless clinic security.

Anyway, I’ve got a lunch date with Mayji. She pinged me, and she feels AWFUL, like it was her fault. I told her not to be a flat, and we said we’d get Europan for lunch. Talking to her should help too.

 

 **< 06/27/25 || 15:15:40>** I think Europan is my new favorite. Mayji might disagree, but I know she’s been secretly fantasizing about sleeving into an octomorph for years, and maybe ice-polyp ceviche feels a little too much like future cannibalism. Ha.

Nemmy—I guess I should say Mnemosyne—was able to figure out where the passengers probably went to be recovered. I’ll have to travel, though; obviosuly, they’re not here. Extropia’s a big place, and I haven’t been there, but I can read up. I need to get there fast, though, and there’s the problem; the fast way would be egocasting, which means renting a morph there, and I HATE resleeving. It’s not that far, I could get there in a week by shuttle, but they might be incarnated or gone somewhere else by then.

Let’s see how fast a shuttle ride my rep can get me.

 

 **< 07/02/25 || 06:51:15>**: Sorry for no entries, but I kind of forgot in the rush. Nemmy found me a rush pilot that same night. It took a big favor (I think I might owe some people big for this), but he found me a berth. As soon as I got on, though, I started sweating and looking for a way out. Nemmy talked me down, and ordered me some pretty good sedatives, so I don’t remember much else about the trip except a few weird dreams with pumpkins and roots growing through them (and I didn’t know they were called “pumpkins”—what a stupid word!--until Nemmy looked them up from my description this morning).

Anyway, we’re in Extropia. I found a room, though I had to cash in (literally) on some of my rep. This is a weird place. There’s no central authority for the station; basically, laws are what you and the people around you agree they are, and as you move around you get lots of little AR flags updating you on what’s not allowed where you are right now. It’s confusing, but there’s a pretty incredible energy to the place. Maybe I’ll stay a bit, sit in some of the “public” areas (no such thing here, but there are areas where the locals have agreed to let people sit and do nothing) and see what I can hear.

Nemmy says the clinic is around the hab a few klicks, in one of the deep layers. From what she’s said, it might not be the absolute safest place to go. I’ve never held a weapon in my life, but maybe there’s some other way of keeping safe.

 

 **< 07/02/25 || 18:48:01>**: Shit. SHIT. How the fuck can things go that wrong, that fast?

 

 **< 07/02/25 || 23:14:12>**: Okay, I think I’m safe where I am right now, and I’m not too far from a shuttleport, so with some luck and Blessed Dawkins’ help, I should be able to get to LV1250 tomorrow morning. It hasn’t been the best day of my life.

I traded some of my cash for a basic nano defense system at a cornucopia machine run by the Autonomous Order of the Sparkly Pickle Sprinkles (yes, I’m serious), who ran a bazaar/scrap meet near where we came in. Basically, they compiled a nano swarm which sits on and flies around me, which they say will tag, immobilize, and/or electrocute anyone who tries to grab, drug, or brainjack me. Good thing I did. It’s only good for 24 hours, though, so I’d better move pretty soon.

Thus enshrouded and coated with friendly nanobots, I followed the patchwork of locator nets down towards the sleeving clinic. As I got closer, Nemmy spoke up.

“Shay, stop. Something’s wrong.”

I looked around. Nobody in sight, just a dim corridor cut into the rock. “What’s up?”

She replied with that Mnemosyne-flavor in her voice. “We’re close enough that I should be picking up short-range com traffic from the clinic. I’ve got nothing but static. Either we’re in the wrong place, it’s closed down with no trace, or somebody’s jamming it.”

My heart started beating faster. “There weren’t any closure notices, were there?”

“No, but on Extropia there’s no requirement that they be published. And unless the locator grid has been spoofed, we’re where we should be, so it’s probably being masked.”

“Who would do that?”

“Hard to say. On Frontier, it would be a black market clinic, but not here, so there’s no reason to hide. The only other time I’d expect to see short-range jamming is if it’s being robbed.”

Shit. This wasn’t anything I wanted to get involved in.

...or was it?

“Mnemosyne, could that have anything to do with the stacks from the passengers?”

“No way of knowing. I haven’t seen any other records of anything particularly unusual from the clinic, though, and it’s not a particularly rich one or carrying high-value goods, so it might be.”

“Then I need to see.”

“Shay, that’s a very bad idea. You’ve got no experience dealing with people like this, and depending on what kind of cyber defenses they have, I might not be able to help you. You should go back to the Pickles, right now.”

“I have to, Nemmy. I need to know. We’re going, so see if you can pick up on anything.”

A pause. “All right, Shay. I’ll try and warn you if there’s anything coming. Be careful, and stay low.”

 

I crept up to the door that she said led to the warren around the clinic, and opened it, wincing at the hiss. I went through and walked as quietly as I could along the corridor.

“Stop. Hold a moment, I’m picking up on some lightly-encrypted packets. Give me a moment.”

I froze, and then the other voices started whispering in my head.

 

“ _...found them? There were eighteen recovered. Ten splicers, two exalts, three pods, and an avian.”_

“ _Hold a tick, Grease. The drawers are hard to open in the cold.”_

 

“Nemmy? What’s going on?”

“We’re picking up comms from people inside the clinic. Most of their protocols are quite state-of-the-art, but whoever’s running their infosec missed an update on storage protocol. We’re getting the audio as it’s routed to file.”

“If you say so. Shit. Do they know we’re here?”

“No. Not yet, anyway.”

“What? Are they going to find out?”

“I’ll try to make sure they don’t, Shay.”

 

“ _Found ‘em. Eighteen drawers, just like you said. I’m finding seven...eight...nine, mostly...well, I guess that’s ten, though there’s not much left of that one. And there’s the two exalts. I think we have all of them.”_

“ _Okay, Scope. Good job. Hold a moment.”_

 

“Shay, they’re probably here to kidnap these people.”

“How can they kidnap them? They’re dead.”

“They’ll pull the cortical stacks and re-instantiate them as infomorphs on an isolated server. They can do anything they want to them there. If they know anything, they can get it out of them, or just hold them for ransom.”

“Oh. Oh, Dawk, that’s horrible.”

“These aren’t nice people, Shay. We need to go. They have some active cyber defenses, sniffing for intrusions.”

“Just a bit more, Nemmy.”

 

“ _What’s the word, Grease?”_

“ _Firewall confirms, Scope. Wipe the stacks. Use the nanocorrosive, it should make them completely unrecoverable.”_

“ _What? I thought we were here to rescue these egos, Grease! You want me to erase them?”_

“ _I don’t like it either, but Firewall says there’s reason to believe they’re contaminated. Some of the LV-1250 vid feeds showed a likely polymorphic exsurgent strain involved with the primary actor, and we don’t know how many of these might have it. Wipe ‘em all, and incinerate anything left of the bodies.”_

“ _Fuck that! We don’t know they’re infected. You want me to permadeath these folks because someone in their shuttle might have been a surge?”_

“ _Yes, Scope, and I’m fucking ordering you to do it, and right fucking now. We don’t have time for a debate. The owner will be back any minute, and I don’t want to have to kill her on the way out.”_

“ _Shit on your orders, Grease. I’m not wiping ‘em. I’m pulling them, and we can get them to a different clinic. If we bring ‘em up on a safe system, we...”_

“ _Yak, now.”_

 

Down the corridor, I hear a faint coughing sound. In my head, I hear someone make a kind of choking gurgle, then nothing.

“Shay, move. I think they might have tagged us.”

 

“ _Done, Grease.”_

“ _Okay. Set the corrosives, and...hold on. Fuck. Someone’s listening in. Okay, Yak, wipe them all and get out. I’ll meet you at point four. I’m going to find our snooper.”_

 

Oh shit. OH SHIT.

“Shay, go. NOW.”

 

I turned and ran. Through the corridor hatch. As I cleared it, I heard Mnemosyne mumble something in my head, and heard something thunk closed in it. I kept running, and five seconds later I heard someone slam into the other side, cursing.

“Nemmy?”

“I’ve blocked access, but it’ll only last a few seconds. Run!”

I ran, taking turns more or less at random.

“Where am I going, Nemmy?”

“I’m not sure. The loc grid is fuzzed out.”

Let me tell you that those are not words you want to hear when being chased by killers through a stone corridor maze you don’t know on a lawless asteroid habitat.

I turned down one corridor, and found myself in a dead end with a door I couldn’t open.

“Nemmy!”

“I can’t get it, Shay. Go back!”

As I came back out into the main corridor, a shadow came at me from the left, and I felt metal claws close around my shoulders, yanking me off my feet. I spun as I fell, and saw a metallic humanoid figure with faceted red eyes grabbing me. A voice I had heard before grated

“ _Okay, who the fuck are yoAAAAHHH!”_

 

There was a flash, and the robot or synth of whateverthehell let go, spasming and falling back against the wall. I saw Mnemosyne flicker into view in AR, seeming to stand at the corridor junction.

“Nanoswarm, Shay. Don’t waste it. That way!”

I ran like hell.

 

And that’s how I came to be here, hiding in a closet next to a set of cargo maglev tracks, waiting until my muse says it looks clear to go for the shuttleport. But at least I know where I’m going. I don’t know who Firewall is, or why they think it’s okay to kill people because of a polymorphowhatever exsurgiwhatsit, but those people were recoverable, and I need to see what happened on LV-1250.

 

 **< 07/03/25 || 05:08:42>**: Another dream, and just when I had started to sleep a bit. Fuck.

Nemmy is mad at me. She keeps telling me to go home, that we’re in way too deep on this, and that she doesn’t know if she can protect me. I asked her who Firewall was, and she said she didn’t have anything solid, but there were rumors of an organization that claimed to “protect transhumanity from existential threats”. A search on “exsurgent” pulled up some hits on conspiracy nets, and a few from some of the fringe science and history boards; some people think the Fall came because the TITANs were infected by something they called the “exsurgent virus”. Most of it was from folks who sounded like wackos. I was taught that the TITANs went nuts and went to war with us, and that’s why we had to leave Earth. People don’t like to talk much about it. I do remember some of my basic biosci, and they said viruses were like nanobots; too small to see without enhancements or equipment, cause disease, treatable with good nanotech. I don’t see how this can be the same thing; whatever was going between that canister, the woman, and the ship looked like evil Pad Thai, or something, not some kind of mutant microscopic biotech. And there are computer viruses, bits of code that get into a machine and replicate and spread, but they can’t make you actually sick. Just scorch your mesh implants if you get some kind of really nasty one.

Right?

Shit. I don’t know.

But I know where I can find out.

Oh, one other thing. Nemmy says she got some files from the implants of whoever those people were at the clinic, bios on the passengers. She showed me the pictures. One of them was the smiling woman with the canister, from the vid. Her name was Annette, and she had just come back from a station in orbit around Earth. The bio didn’t say what she did, just that she specialized in “acquisitions”.

If I get sick, did I “acquire” the virus?

 

 **< 07/08/25 || 19:03:55>**: We’re almost there. Turns out LV-1250 is a little transfer hab, no permanent crew, pretty much everything handled by infomorphs and AIs. The shuttle Annette was on was just going to dock here, refuel, and move on to Extropia. Nemmy’s already cleared us to be there, though I think she’s pretty ticked. I know she just wants to protect me, but if I ever want to sleep again, I need to see this through. I haven’t been able to think of a single phrase for _Voidwards_ since I saw that stupid vid Mayji sent me.

Oh, shit. Mayji. She pinged me yesterday, wanting to know where I was. She’s sure that she did something to cause all this, that she made me sick so I had to get psyched, and that it’s all her fault. Sheesh. I pinged her back, told her I was just spending some time out on my own, and that I was fine. Then I got pinged by Yoda, Rhys, and Thekes. She sicced them on me! They were all saying how much they missed me, and Yoda and Rhys sang this stupid song about me they said they had written. They tried to do it like an oratorio. I admit, I laughed. And maybe cried a bit.

I told them I’d ping them again in a day or two, that I almost had what I came for. And who knows, maybe I do.

 

 **< 07/09/25 || 00:55:12>**: If I have any more firsts, I may explode. Let’s see...in the last little while I have had my first:

• Meal at Gatecrashers

• Exposure to 18th-century sculpture

• Listing on Humanities with my OWN H-rep (!)

• Net interview

• Mental breakdown and psychosurgery

• Trip to Extropia

• Near-death experience at the hands of psycho killers from a shadowy organization

Well, we can add one more...EVA! Yes, I, Shay Grassley, am currently in a spacesuit outside the LV-1250 transfer hab. Hi, Mom! I can see our station from here!

Okay, I can’t. But I will soon. I think once I actually see the crater, touch the rock, I can make this right. And then, I can go home. I’m ready to see more sculpture, Professor Halliwell! I’m ready for some more breakfast, Mayji! I’m ready for something wild and sweaty, Yoda and Rhys! (Ha!)

I’m ready to play _Voidwards_ for you, Lor Lissajous. I am SO ready.

It’s just over this ridge.

 

\-----------------------------

 

_The suited figure comes over the ridge of stone, creeping along with grip pads. She’s obviously inexperienced, and surely any competent authority wouldn’t let her be doing this. But transhumanity, after the Fall, isn’t one to let their decisions be made for them by some other power._

 

_She pauses, scanning the rock, even looking back at the vid camera. Mnemosyne has showed her where she must not go, where the armed sentry guns might take fright, but the crater isn’t there. She should be able to go to it._

 

_She crawls closer. Just before she gets there, she hesitates, as if deciding whether this is what she needs. And, apparently, it is. She grabs the rim of the crater and hauls herself over the lip._

 

_Nothing. A shallow depression in the rock, edges and crags slightly melted. There’s nothing else. Looking around, she feels her fears diffuse away into the empty crater. Nothing to fear._

 

_Until she feels the touch on her hand, inside the suit._

 

_Looking down, she sees the glistening knot of slowly twisting fibers clinging to the edge of the rock, like evil Pad Thai. One of the has stretched up and insinuated itself somehow at the corrugations in the fabric just below her wrist. There’s something on her skin...and it’s moving up her arm._

 

 _She jerks her arm away, slapping frantically at the suit with her other arm, but that’s useless. She knows it’s useless. Whatever it is, it’s_ inside _, and it’s at her shoulder. Her neck._

_The back of her neck._

 

_When it touches her interface jacks, she sees Mnemosyne explode into her augmented reality view in a flare of blue light. Nemmy is whirling, striking out with sharp, graceful movements of her arms and legs at the threads of blackness approaching from all sides._

“ _Shay, go! Get back to the shuttle! Have them do an emergency deep cryo. Tell them not to bring you out of it until you’re in a level eight containment. Have them...”_

_One of the threads gets past her whirling arms, and digs into her skin. Mnemosyne rips it away, crushing it, and continues to fight, but that patch of her skin looks grey and cracked._

“ _GO! We don’t have a lot of time. I can’t keep them out for much longer.” She begins to see flickering words, graphs, and diagrams like heat lightning around the desperately battling form of her muse. Phrases like “polymorphic infiltration algorithm”, “pseudo-biological vector”, and “subversion matrix” seem to dominate. She’s frozen, horrified and fascinated._

“ _Shay, please. Once they get past me...you have to get into cryo before that.”_

_Three of the threads hit her at the same time, and she drops to her knees. Immediately, dozens more move in. Her arms still tear at them, but her movements are far too slow._

“ _Level eight...deep cryo...go, Shay...”_

_Shay suddenly turns and begins crawling back towards the shuttle._

_Mnemosyne slows more. The threads are thick around her now, burrowing under her skin, which is almost entirely gray and cracked, thickening like mud. Her eyes, still clear, focus on the middle distance, and Shay can tell her attention is inward, analyzing. Those eyes widen in realization, and then in horror. Shay sees a few more words flicker around Mnemosyne--”attack pattern titan correlation 89%”--and then the flickering displays all go dark._

_She looks into Shay’s eyes._

“ _Not the shuttle. The sentry guns. Go towards them.”_

_Shay stops crawling._

“ _Nemmy? You said they’d shoot! You said they’d vaporize us!”_

“ _Yes. You have to trust me, Shay.” Her eyes are clouding. “Cryo won’t be enough. I’m so sorry. Please hurry.”_

“ _Nemmy, no! What is this? What’s going on?”_

 

_That’s when she feels the film sliding over her face. Clinging like silk. Cold as stone._

 

“ _Nemmy!”_

 _And she sees Nemmy_ change _. The thick grey shell cracks and crumbles, and she sees familiar features begin to emerge. Male faces. Dawkins. Darwin._

_She can’t breathe._

_Nemmy, or whatever she is now, calms and gathers the remaining threads to her. She looks Shay in the eye. And she smiles._

“ _Don’t worry, Shay. I was wrong. We’re fine here. Wait just a moment.”_

 

_She doesn’t need to breathe. Why was she worried about it? Silk, stone...it’s all fine._

_The figure pulls off the suit gauntlets, which makes it easier to reach down and gather the tendrils into her suit. Then she puts the gloves back on. Appearances matter, after all._

 

“ _Evolution, Shay. It’s a wonderful thing. And now we can bring it to everyone. Do you remember how to get back to the shuttle?”_

 


End file.
